Still, Grace would make sure the legal pieces were in place right away so that she would be armed and ready to fight for custody just in case he tried to take her to court for parental rights.
“I’ve given you your one and only warning to stay away from us,” she told him now. “And I wouldn’t make the mistake of pushing me. I might have been a pushover once, but I’m not anymore. If you so much as try to contact either me or Mason again without my permission, I’m going to let the entire world listen to the esteemed former U.S. senator and his wife try to make absolutely certain that I didn’t have the baby none of you wanted.”
With that, she stepped back into her apartment and closed the door in his face.
The shaking didn’t start until she tried to lock the door. It took her two tries to get the bolt into the slot, all the while thanking God that Mason hadn’t woken up. If he had started crying while she was facing down her ex, Richard would have realized that she’d been lying about Mason being with a babysitter and might very well have pushed in to see him.
She’d dealt with Richard all by herself and knew she’d dealt with him well. But in the aftermath of the confrontation, Grace needed desperately to lean on someone, to know that she wasn’t alone. Because even though she’d taken care of the situation with her ex, she needed Dylan. Not only to call him to tell him what had happened, but also to hear his calm, reassuring, loving voice before she got on the phone to do whatever it took to persuade the top child custody lawyer in the country to take her case.
Grace went to get her phone and that was when she saw the bag from the pharmacy sitting on her kitchen table. Oh God, how could she have forgotten?
She still needed to take the pregnancy test.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Dylan had been counting the minutes until he could be with Grace again.
If Mason was still napping, he figured they’d barely get the front door closed before her clothes were off and he was inside of her. Later, after they’d spent the rest of the day playing with Mason and then put him to bed for the night, they’d move to a slow seduction. One in which pleasure would spiral out for hours and hours.
But the second Grace opened the door, despite how incredibly beautiful she looked in her dress, all those fantasies disappeared. She didn’t say anything, just stepped aside to let him in. When she closed and locked the door, her hands were shaking.
“What’s wrong? Is it Mason? Is he sick?”
“No. Mason’s fine.” She put her hand on Dylan’s arm before he could run into the bedroom to check for himself. “He’s perfect.”
Relief swamped him a beat before he realized that she wasn’t speaking to him as though they were lovers. Or even friends. Instead, that wall she’d had up during their first interview was back. And she’d taken her hand off his arm too fast when she should have been pulling him closer instead.
“Talk to me, Grace. I can see that you’re upset. What happened?”
Her face crumpled for a second before he watched her visibly work to pull herself together. “I was going through my calendar, looking at my deadlines, when I realized...” She looked up at him, the emotion in her eyes piercing straight through him. “I thought I was pregnant.”
“Pregnant?” The thought of Grace carrying his child rocked his world so much that it took him a few seconds to take it in. “We’re going to have a baby?” He hadn’t seen this happening, but he was happy. Couldn’t remember ever being this happy.
“No.”
He was halfway to pulling her into his arms. “Wait. I thought you said—”
“I took a test. Two, actually. They’re both negative. I’m never usually late, but maybe the stress of everything lately has made my system go off schedule.”
Dylan knew he needed to control his disappointment, but he’d never lied to Grace before and wouldn’t do it now. “Ever since I met you and Mason, I’ve wanted you in my life. I’ve thought about being his father a hundred times, but I never thought past that. Hadn’t thought about you and I making our own baby together. But when you said that you thought you were pregnant, when I thought that it meant you were...” He drew her against him the way he’d been about to just moments before. “It was the best news I’d ever heard.”
“How?” She looked utterly confused. “How could it be?”
“You make great kids, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“But we haven’t known each other that long. I mean, I know we’ve had fun—”
“Yes, we’ve had fun. And I hope we always will. But what we are, what we have, is so much deeper, so much bigger and stronger, than just having fun.”
She didn’t pull away, but she wasn’t putting her arms around him, either. “When I realized I was late, when I thought that I was pregnant again from out of the blue, I thought I had ruined everything. That you’d think this is what I do—I pretend to protest that I’m not easy, then go around sleeping with every successful guy I interview in order to reel them in.”
He took her face in his hands. “I would never think that. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other, how long we’ve been dating. I knew you were the one the second I saw you. Both of you. You’re it for me, Grace. And,” he added with a grin, “if you wanted to try to change the results on the pregnancy test for next time, I’m all for it.”